Akira Power
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Akira learns that it’s okay to grow up a little as long as he can still be Akira.


**Title:** Akira Power  
**Universe:** Nobuta wo Produce  
**Theme/Topic:** N/A  
**Rating:** PG  
**Character/Pairing/s:** vaguely, lightly AkiraxShuuji (with obligatory mentions of Nobuta)  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** OOC and weirdness? Also, spoilers for the series, clearly.  
**Word Count:** 2,264**  
Summary:** Akira learns that it's okay to grow up a little as long as he can still be Akira.**  
Dedication:** Happy birthday jain! LOL I had the hardest time trying to come up with something for you.  
**A/N:** Idea borne of desperation. I haven't written Nobuta in so long I think I've forgotten the characters; the Akira that is being written here is definitely not the Akira I remember, in any case. I AM SO SORRY.  
**Disclaimer:** No harm is meant by this!

* * *

"Kusano-sama!" Tachibana yelps, scurrying into Akira's father's office red-faced and panicky first thing on Monday morning. He waves a handful of papers in the air and can't talk right away for being out of breath.

Akira watches him as he leans against the doorframe, panting anxiously.

"Kusano-sama," he manages again after a beat, "there's…there's a big emergency!"

From the desk, Akira blinks back at his father's assistant—_his_ assistant now—and sighs. "What emergency?" he asks. Akira has discovered in his short time here that there are a lot of emergencies in this place; a new one pops up every day and so it's hard for him to keep track of them all when Tachibana isn't more specific in his flailing. As he waits for an answer, Akira resists the urge to fiddle with one of the fancy paperweights in front of him because he knows it just makes Tachibana think that he's bored or that he isn't paying attention.

After another second or so Tachibana straightens and takes a deep breath to calm himself down; he adjusts his tie too, even though Akira is pretty sure he doesn't do it because the tie is crooked so much as out of some sort of funny nervous habit. "The manufacturers in China," Tachibana begins, "they suddenly want to renegotiate the contract even though production was scheduled to begin next month; the section chiefs don't know what to do. If the contract goes into negotiations again this will push back our initial release dates at least another two months. If that happens…" he trails off then, unable to actually say the words about how bad something like that will be for the company. He opts to look at Akira helplessly instead.

Akira wants to look back at Tachibana just as helplessly as Tachibana is looking at him right now but manages not to; Akira knows that Tachibana isn't Shuuji, and so Tachibana won't take one look at Akira's helpless face and immediately know it's a sign that Tachibana should be the one to do the fixing this time. That, Akira knows, is something only Shuuji does.

Akira has learned that showing Tachibana his helpless face usually just means that something bad happens to Tachibana's blood pressure; sometimes his eyes will roll back into his head and he'll pass out briefly.

The corporate world seems to do that to a lot of people, Akira thinks.

"Kusano-sama…"

"_A-ki-ra_," Akira reminds him perfunctorily, pursing his lips and doing his best to look thoughtful instead of helpless. "Kusano-sama is my old man."

Tachibana blinks. "Ku…Akira-sama… should I call Kusano-sama? I mean… he would know what to do…"

Akira shakes his head, brow furrowed at the thought of bothering his dad for something like that. "Call the manufacturers and set up a phone conference with them at," he pauses to glance at the clock and notes disappointedly that the day isn't half over yet like he wants it to be, "three. I'll have to talk to them about it myself, I guess," he sighs.

A pause. Then an obedient, "H-hai!" followed by a bow.

Akira watches Tachibana spin around to go and do exactly as he's told.

Once the door is closed behind him and Akira is alone in the office again, he relaxes his shoulders a little, rubbing his temples tiredly and leaning back in his chair.

He stares at the ceiling for a while. "Oi, old man!" he shouts, to the light above his desk, "Get better soon!!"

No response. He spins in his chair a little after that and puts off checking his E-mail for as long as possible.

As long as possible in this world ends up amounting to only about five minutes, because that's when his father's secretary, Inoue-san, pokes her head into his door and says that she's getting a lot of calls asking about whether Kusano-sama has checked his E-mail or not yet.

He smiles back at her as best and brightly as he can and says, "I'm checking now, ne."

She smiles back and closes the door while he starts to check his E-mail.

When he logs in there are already twenty messages regarding the China fiasco waiting for him, as well as five more about use of the company helicopter and thirty-seven that just say RE: in the subject line and nothing else. The last message on the list is the only important one he can see out of everything flooding his inbox this morning; it's from Nobuta, who is doing fine with her studies in America. In the E-mail, she attaches a picture of herself standing on the Santa Monica Pier with her American classmates. Hers ends up being the only message Akira reads for a while, at least until Inoue-san pokes her head through the door again, asking the same question as earlier except with coffee in hand this time. "Has Kusano-sama checked his E-mail yet?"

"I'm doing it," he says, taking the coffee from her. He clicks on the first RE: and discovers that it's from the people in Marketing; they are trying to finalize the selection of idols that the company is going to put in the next CM campaign. There is a picture of a boyband in stylish T-shirts running along the beach attached to the latest message in the thread; apparently they are the frontrunners so far.

Akira stares at the picture for a while, not because of the boyband but because of the beach. This summer he was supposed to go with Shuuji to find temporary jobs at the oceanfront. They were going to learn how to surf and how to dive and make shaved ice together, except that it didn't happen because Akira's father suddenly got sick.

In light of that, going to the beach for the summer with his best friend had somehow—almost impossibly— been eclipsed by something more important; Akira remembers how Shuuji had put his hand on Akira's shoulder when he'd seen Akira's helpless expression at the news of his father's collapse, saying, "There will always be other summers," very calmly.

So Akira is here instead of at the beach with Shuuji, wearing his father's suit and his father's tie and sitting in his father's desk while checking his father's E-mails like he's always never wanted to.

Akira thinks that he misses being Akira.

Shuuji, having his summer plans thus disrupted, had opted to get ahead in classes over the next few months instead; he's taking an extra English language course and something about European Literature at Keio until school starts properly for the two of them again.

Akira thinks that he misses Shuuji too.

"If you get lonely," Shuuji had told him, right before he'd gotten on the company helicopter and flown away, "you can always call."

Akira looks at his cell phone and feels a little bit lonely.

"Shuuji has class today, Akira!" he tells himself out loud, and meticulously proceeds to delete all the RE: messages from his inbox. He thinks the boyband is fine anyway; they'd looked like they were having fun.

After he's done, Akira looks at his cell phone again.

Barely fifteen minutes after he told himself he wouldn't, he picks up the phone and calls Shuuji.

The call goes to voicemail right away just like he'd known it would (because Shuuji is always responsible and turns it off during class); Akira drums his fingers on the table until the voice recording ends and the little beep cues him to leave a message.

"Shuuji," he whines abruptly, without even saying hi first, "Shuuji, everyone here wears the exact same thing every day and when I sneeze fifty people all hand me tissues at the same time. I only need one! They should have more clothes and less Kleenex and not the other way around."

He hangs up.

He deletes a handful of other E-mails after that and when it makes him feel guilty, clicks on the latest one about China. It's from one of the section chiefs downstairs.

In his message, the section chief says that they should threaten to sue the Chinese company for going back on their word and scare them into getting back to work. It's the fastest way to avoid a disaster.

Akira deletes that one too.

On his next voicemail to Shuuji ten minutes later: "I have to talk to Chinese people today, ne. The only Chinese I know is 'Ni Hao' and I don't think they'll let me say just that the whole time without getting mad. My computer is probably haunted."

He hangs up.

After that there's a meeting with the board of directors that he has to go to and stay awake for; in the middle of it he yawns because he can't help it and everyone immediately goes dead silent while looking at him.

He excuses himself to the bathroom.

"Shuuji," he says into his phone moments later, as he's sitting on the toilet seat in the very back stall of the nearest men's room, "Shuuji, sometimes my eyeballs itch and the only way to make them stop is to close them. Am I going blind? Or bald, maybe? There's a funny old man who's bald that's sitting across from me in the meeting hall and he keeps squinting at me like he wants to close his eyes too; do you think he has the same thing I do?"

He hangs up.

Back at the meeting, he manages to keep his eyes open the whole time, even though all he wants to do is close them. The old man sitting across from him continues to squint.

After that it's lunch; he takes it with the Marketing people downstairs because Tachibana makes him. They ask him what he thinks about the boyband and he says they're fine; one of them kind of looks like a girl.

This sparks a whole new debate about the group's overall marketability that Akira hadn't meant to start when he said that. When he gets up to go get seconds from the catering buffet, he picks up his phone again.

"Shuuji, let's start a band," he whispers into the mouthpiece while the Marketing team argues heatedly about the mass appeal of androgyny in the background. He thinks of that photograph from earlier, and how the boyband guys all looked like they were having fun. "If we start a band, then maybe we can run on the beach all day wearing cool clothes and sing as loud as we want. Do you know any guys who look like girls?"

He hangs up after getting a second serving of beef and sits back at the table reluctantly. He manages to smooth things over with the Marketing people by saying that the boyband member who looks like a girl looks like a really _cute_ girl and that he's sure people will like that.

After that, there are more E-mails to answer and a few memos too; he puts his signature on stacks and stacks of papers that Inoue-san and Tachibana bring him for the next few hours, until his hand hurts, and when he looks at the clock again, it's almost time for him to take that conference call with China. Honestly, he still really doesn't want to.

And then, like magic, his cell phone suddenly rings.

When he answers it's Shuuji who he misses, Shuuji who is currently on the train, heading home after a long day of classes. "When I looked at my phone and saw all those missed calls from you I called you back right away," Shuuji explains, and in the background, Akira can hear the train recording chiming in to announce the next stop, "I didn't get to check any of the messages you left me first because I was worried. Are you okay? What did your messages say?"

"I'm fine," Akira replies, trying to remember what he'd been calling Shuuji about all day, what he'd been confessing to Shuuji's mailbox while he was supposed to be working.

He suddenly can't recall what any of those messages had been about specifically, or if they'd even been really important at all. He thinks they were, somehow, and doesn't quite know how to summarize them all for Shuuji, who wants to know.

"Akira?" Shuuji sounds worried.

"Shuuji, I can't be me here," Akira suddenly finds himself blurting, without thinking.

A moment.

From the other end, Akira can hear Shuuji's breathing against the mouthpiece, can hear the sounds that mean Shuuji is tucking his hair behind his ears and shifting the phone in his hands while he thinks about what to say in response. Somehow, it all seems loud, even louder than the chiming of the train as they reach the next stop.

"Finish your work first," Shuuji starts after a while, patiently, simply, "and after that, you can always come back home and be Akira again."

When Akira hangs up a few minutes later it's just in time; Tachibana comes skittering into his office looking anxious just like always. "China is on line three," he starts, adjusting his tie nervously, "Are you ready, Akira-sama?"

Akira takes a deep breath and slides his cell phone into his pocket. He thinks about work and about Shuuji and about getting to be Akira again, someday.

Most of all, he thinks about how Shuuji had said, "I'll be waiting," right before hanging up just now.

Akira sets his jaw.

"I'm ready," he tells Tachibana, and picks up his father's phone.

After he finishes this—after he finishes today— he'll be one step closer to home.

**END**


End file.
